


Riding in Cars With Boys - Alfred & Arthur

by Horribibble



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:52:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horribibble/pseuds/Horribibble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not so much the teenagers that are crazy as the parents that let them drive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riding in Cars With Boys - Alfred & Arthur

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually the beginning of a longer story, but for now it can stand as a oneshot until I get off my lazy butt.

1- Alfred  
  
So it turns out there's no such thing as the Car Fairy.  
  
Or, at least, a Car Fairy that replaces your dad's car when it gets trashed six ways to Sunday. Which might be kind of my fault. More than the other guy's.  
  
Which is apparently what insurance is for.  
  
But it turns out they charge you.  
  
A lot.  
  
We're talking thousands.  
  
Plus the cost of repairs for _your_ car.  
  
My dad wants me to figure out a way to pay him back _and_ find a different way to get to school, which sucks more than a little bit, when you think about it. How lame is that, walking to the bus stop with all the elementary kids?  
  
 _Waiting_ at the bus stop with all the elementary kids!  
  
I'm a fucking _senior_.  
  
Who makes their 17-year-old senior ride the big yellow bus, these days?!  
  
I’ll tell you:  
  
Nathan fucking Williams.   
  
My dear old dad, who nearly had two consecutive heart attacks when he found out what I’d ‘done to his car’. Not ‘are you okay, son?’ but ‘ALFRED FUCKING JONES! What in the name of _G-D_ have you done to my Lexus?!’  
  
Because G-d totally has dibs on my dad’s girlymobile. Seriously.   
  
But anyway, two things:  
  
One : ‘Fucking’ is totally not my middle name. ...Probably. My parents haven’t told me what my middle name actually is, and everyone pretty much acts like it is, anyway, but there is _no way_ that’s legal. None. I mean, did you hear about the chick in Hawaii? First name, Tallulah. Last name, Doesthehula? Yeah. The judge filed an injunction against her parents or something. I bet her name is something like Jane Doe Smith, now.   
  
If they’ll take legal action for a name like ‘Tallulah Doesthehula’, there is no _way_ my parents could get ‘Alfred Fucking Jones’ past the radar. Legal ninjas my parents are not.   
  
Two : What middle-aged man with two teenage sons drives a Lexus? Better question - what middle-aged man with two teenage sons who could _afford_ a Lexus _and_ a happy marriage _let one of his teenage sons drive it_?  
  
When you think about it, the blame is not entirely mine.  
  
I’m a seventeen year old male.  
  
Behind the wheel of a Lexus that most likely cost more than my entire high school education, including extracurriculars and athletic costs. Even that ‘theater appreciation’ fee the accounting office slapped onto anyone who may, at any point, risk stepping foot in the shiny new theater/auditorium. Which is a con, by the way.   
  
Mandatory assemblies and ‘fine art enrichment presentations’ litter our school’s event calendar like ugly-velvet-curtained landmines. You _will_ be enriched. There is _no escape_.  
  
I wonder sometimes if the theater kids are completely desensitized to the endless boredom, or if they’re just ahead of the game--giving in to the inevitable. Marching zombie-style towards those G-d-awful must-be-mustard, could-be-velvet curtains.  
  
New. They were new. Who the hell got financial backing for a brand spanking new school theater and picked curtains the color of baby food?  
  
I’m not even saying this as a ‘dumb athlete’. I’m perfectly cool with the drama department. I used to play in the band before my growth spurt hit and that ‘freaky tall kid’ turned into a ‘natural born athlete’. I still take studio art classes, and I’m _still_ friends with all the people I hung out with before.   
  
...Except Arthur.   
  
I _really_ wish I knew what happened with Arthur.  
  
See, Arthur Kirkland’s been my next door neighbor since before we were born. Our mothers used to compare belly-sizes, and _my_ mom used to go over to scare the crap out of Arthur’s older brothers whenever they gave Mrs. Kirkland a hard time.   
  
Which was pretty much always.   
  
I’m not exaggerating. All of Arthur’s older siblings are gigantic _assholes._ To _everyone_ , including each other. Attempted murder was to the Kirkland kids what coloring was to _everybody else_. I refused to go over there without my mother until I was around five, and she taught me how to kick people in the balls.   
  
I was pretty lucky, really. You know how they tell you to stand up to bullies, and they’ll back down? ‘It’s all self-esteem’ and all that crap?  
  
That’s bullshit. Seamus, Fallon, Connor, and Tristan did not have a ‘self-esteem’ problem. They all had a ‘being a sociopath’ problem. Except, at around six, after narrowly avoiding three mysterious, watery-death related ‘accidents’ and a handful of other creative household executions, I found out about comics.   
  
I. Fucking. Love. Comics.  
  
Forget all that crap people say about them rotting your brain--there is _no better role model_ than Super Man. Ghandi? He was a jerk to his wife. Mother Theresa? She was cool, but she couldn’t lift a truck. And the Dalai Lama can give as many meaningful pieces of advice as he wants--he will never twist an i-beam into a pretzel.   
  
The man even made having to get _glasses_ cool. Without him, my mom never would’ve gotten me to let go of the door post at the optometrist’s office.   
  
I _absorbed_ Super Man.  
  
So when my mother finally forced Mattie to come over with me--he was such a sweetheart, she said, not even the Devil himself would touch our Mattie (This was before we found out about ‘Hockey Season’, by the way.)--everything sort of went comic print. Origin style.  
  
The Devil himself might not have tried to touch Mattie, but Seamus Kirkland was still perfectly willing to piledrive him.   
  
Until I started screaming.   
  
I won’t lie to you--there was nothing manly about that scream, not even six-year-old-boy manly. I _shrieked_ like a _motherfucker_ when Seamus tried that shit on Mattie. After that, there was a whole lot of teeth and nails and more teeth. I remember being attached to his _face,_ at some point. No joke.  
  
And then, the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, slammed into the dirt, and who was right there with me?  
  
Arthur.   
  
Arthur Kirkland.  
  
The weird, quiet one that always managed to hole himself up with a huge pile of books somewhere his brothers, miraculously, could not follow. He was damn good at self-preservation. At four, I’d just called it ‘cheating’.  
  
Sure, we’d played around before we figured out how to talk or eat pizza or demand lollipops, but after potty training, we didn’t really have that much in common. He had ‘word books’ and a low pain tolerance, and I had comic books and a mother that kept sending me over covered in different character band aids.   
  
(It was kind of sick, having no real concept of time, but being able to rattle off how long I’d been injured in each particular place by way of Barbie, Batman, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.)  
  
Anyway, it was Arthur.   
  
Tiny, tidy Arthur was right there in the dirt where one of his brothers had thrown him down.   
  
Because he’d jumped Seamus, too. Right after me. He’d seen me latching onto his brother like some kind of spider monkey from hell, and he’d known that I was about to get my sunburnt, six-year-old, Barbie-band aid sporting ass handed to me.   
  
So he’d put his up for collateral, too.  
  
Something about that absolutely _amazed_ me. I mean, I had _no fucking clue_ what had made _me_ do it, besides that absolute pre-adolescent determination that, come hell or high water, the person that kissed my boo boos better was _not to be messed with_. Arthur was related to the kid. He had high places to hide out. There was no reason for him to get wailed on, too.  
  
I guess that’s why, even while Seamus started screaming and cursing and _really trying to kill us_ , and Mr. Kirkland had to come running to ‘kick their arses straight up to their bloody rooms’, and Mattie started wailing like they’d cut my head off...I guess that’s why I just sat there, giving this big, dumb missing-tooth smile.   
  
Mrs. Kirkland came out to make sure we were all right before taking us--all three, Arthur, Mattie, and me--straight over to our house. Mom was waiting at the door, grinning like a crazy person.   
  
She said, “Hey, Molly.”  
  
And Mrs. Kirkland said, “You’d never guess, Liberty.”   
(That’s my mom’s name--Liberty. Liberty Jones.)  
  
So my mom said, “Well, I thought they’d finally got hold of a cat,” She looked us over, still grinning, “Was that my Al?”  
  
Molly laughed, and it was like a ten ton weight came off, because we were pretty sure that going for Seamus’s eyes, no matter how much he deserved it, was going to net us some pretty nasty spankings, even if we didn’t say it.  
  
Molly laughed, and shook her head, and sort of ruffled Arthur’s hair, “Some of it was Arthur, I think. We’ve got a right pair of heroes, here, Libs.”  
  
I felt kind of guilty, being called a hero for the first time when all I’d done was throw a fit all over the oldest Kirkland delinquent. But then there was Matt, nodding his head up and down so fast I thought it’d snap off his neck.   
  
He said, “Heroes.” And that was it. So soft, and small, and just like Matthew. Coming from him, it meant a whole hell of a lot. And I clapped Arthur on the shoulder like we’d just won a really long match of some sport or another.  
  
“Nice work, Batman.” That’s what I told him. And for the first time, he just smiled--that little off-humor smile--like he liked me, like I was funny, but still just a little bit too eager-puppy for my own good. But he wasn’t rolling his eyes.   
  
My mom made us all cookies and milk--she even cracked open one of those freezer pies and let Mrs. Molly Kirkland cut it into neat little slices before they broke out the first-aid kit.   
  
We submitted to the patchwork plastering and burning, stinging iodine, and ate everything our mothers gave us so fast you’d think we’d make ourselves sick. After that, I was hauling Mattie and Arthur back upstairs to show off our room, and my comic book collection. Still, Arthur didn’t really talk. He just nodded and ‘hmm’ed along with me.  
  
By the time they stood goodbye-ing in the doorway, Mrs. Kirkland holding onto Arthur’s hand like it might snap into little cartoon-wrapped pieces, I was almost convinced that Arthur was mute or something. Until he smiled again, like he had earlier.  
  
He said, “Smooth moves, Superman.” In that neat British accent, and it was like, that was it. I had officially _won_ for once. I decided that it could be pretty cool to be a hero, especially with an awesome partner like broody Bats.   
  
After that, we were together a lot more often. Hiding from his brothers, pulling Mattie along in our wagon, and eventually keeping baby Peter from being the ball whenever Seamus and the others felt like playing football--American, or otherwise.  
  
We were close. For years, we were close.  
  
Seamus broke my arm, once, and the next day at school, Arthur had shown up with a nasty black eye and the dopiest grin I’d ever seen him wear. And then I’d spotted Seamus, with this massive bandage covering his broken nose.  
  
I composed a goofy, half-assed serenade for him after I’d had enough practice in band, and he laughed and applauded for me, like I’d actually put on a performance. I was a lot better at playing harmonica, and we both knew it, but it was good that I could put forth enough effort to learn to read real music.  
  
We both liked music, I remember. My tastes were pretty flighty, and nothing lasted very long, but Arthur knew about the classics. He could tell me so much about all of them, and all I had to do was listen, and I felt like I’d really learned something--like he was teaching me how to be mature, without forcing me.  
  
Then, suddenly, puberty hit, and there were ‘cliques’. The old mob didn’t cut it anymore, and I was so busy trying to figure out just what was going on and what I was best suited for, that I lost track of Arthur.   
  
The Kirklands still lived just on the other side of the fence, it was just suddenly a lot harder to peek over the boards.  
  
Like I said, for years, we were close.  
  
Until we weren’t anymore.   
  
\--  
  
So, yeah, incorrigible, irresponsible me. On my own, I’m pretty much everyone’s favorite ditz. Arthur was the smart one, not me. I play sports, and my parents are well-established, so I probably shouldn’t be any good at physics, or drawing, or playing anything involving notes or clefs.  
  
I have no concept of reality, and I need to find a way to catch a ride back to it from 7:45 to 3:00, Monday through Friday, until graduation.  
  
Which makes this a pretty golden opportunity to figure things out, because Arthur has a car. 


End file.
